


Day Twenty-Seven: During One of their Birthdays (AKA Oops, Forgot to Reserve the Table)

by a_xmasmurder



Series: 30 Days of OTP: Bond/Q [27]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond - All Media Types, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: 30 Day OTP Challenge, And can kill your liver, And so does Alec, Birthdays, But he forgets things sometimes, James Bond: Friendship is Magic, M/M, Paperwork sucks, Q is having fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-16 00:34:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_xmasmurder/pseuds/a_xmasmurder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Back to business as usual. Q is having fun too late at night again, and Alec fucking HATES PAPERWORK, OKAY?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day Twenty-Seven: During One of their Birthdays (AKA Oops, Forgot to Reserve the Table)

**Author's Note:**

> Once again, I'm not lucky enough to know other languages, so I use Google Translate, which is only slightly better than a phrasebook in that it's on the internet. So let me know if I called someone a red-arsed baboon, yeah?

Yet another day stuck behind a computer monitor, fighting off another unseen opponent.

Q flicked his fingers over the keys, focused on the task at hand. Windows opened and closed again, the progress tracked in a little ticker window on his right hand monitor. He cocked his head and scowled lightly.

“You aren’t getting away with that, sweetie.” Another flick of his finger, and three dummy programmes started running at once, something in the back of his mind ticking off the seconds that this new invader has been inside MI6’s network and correlating that information to how many weeks the person in charge of watching their servers would be digging coal in Canada. The thought alone made the Quartermaster want to cringe in horror and laugh maniacally. He settled for chuckling darkly to himself as the hacker tried slipping past one of the programmes.

“I don’t think so.” He blinked once, and then again as the hacker blocked each of Q’s attempts to pry open a bit of their server, even their own computer _But no, it’d have to be a conglomerate or network because this is MI fucking bloody 6, and even I had to have a stolen network behind me when I broke in the first few times...no, this hacker might be alone, but they’ve got power behind them, processing power that could put some Fortune 500 companies to shame._ His lips were turned up slightly, just a small smirk of intrigue; now they pulled further into a full fledged grin.

“Oh, I want you. I _want_ you.” His fingers flew over the keyboards in front of him, lines of programming and code streaming across the multiple monitors and windows popping up and closing again, and he sighed happily. _In the zone, nothing can touch me. Come find me, darling, and I’ll show you a good time. I might even let you live._ That brought another chuckle out of him. _No, I’ll just send a junior agent to your house or something._ He shifted in his chair, settling in for the battle ahead.

He didn’t notice the audience behind him.

  
  
  
  
  
  


“You know, I get the same chills down my spine watching him work his magic against cyber-terrorists as I do when I overhear you on a mission, Bond.” Eve leaned back against a random minion’s desk, her mid-thigh length skirt riding up only the slightest bit to reveal a raw-looking bruise on the outside of her left leg. Bond cocked his head in question, and she smiled in slight apology. “Oh, don’t worry about it. Broke a heel getting out of my car yesterday morning, and fell onto the kerb. Nothing too worrisome, and no one for you to kill.”  
  
“I could kill your shoes.” Bond scowled. “No one hurts my Moneypenny.”

“That is a frightening sentence, coming from you. Besides, there's nothing for it, the shoes are on their way to the dump as we speak, darling.” She patted his bespoke knee. “You have nothing to worry about.”

“He’s still going to growl and sniff around like a disgruntled grizzly until he can kill something, you know that, right?” Alec twirled a coin between his fingers, the one he had with him... _then_. Bond turned his scowl onto the flashing coin, his mind going right back to that moment in the alley... _No, go away, it's done, stop it now. Everything is back to normal._ He grunted and blinked away the ropy tendrils of aggression in his animal brain.  _Grizzly, indeed._

“No, not a grizzly. More like a wolverine who is off his feed.” Eve inspected her perfect nails, done up a nice pale pink, with a french design. Both agents felt her hands looked much better with natural nails...and wrapped around a gun, but they knew better than to voice their opinions. One quick look at each other settled it.

Bond cocked his head the other direction, shifting his gaze until he stared intently at the back of his boyfriend’s head. “When’s the last time he got up from that chair?”

Alec looked down at the little clock on the monitor in front of him. “Well, let's see. It's twenty-three hundred right now, add about three days to that...”

“Don’t be daft. He’s only been here since half four.” Eve sighed and picked at her thumbnail a bit.  
  
The big Russian rolled his sore shoulder and shrugged. “Half four in the _morning_. And he’s been glued to the monitor ever since.”

James chuckled. “When isn’t he glued to one monitor or another? Phone, laptop, tablet, e-reader, game...” he flapped a hand in mock frustration “...thingie, telly, desktop...he’s going to get cancer from the UV. I’m surprised he doesn’t have a tan. Can you get a tan from a computer screen?” He squints at Q’s nape, then all three of them jerked in surprise when the Quartermaster jumped up from the chair with a ear-piercing screech, hands fisted and thrust into the air.

“I fucking _rule!_ No one beats Spider, damn it! I’ve got you in my web now, and you aren’t getting out...” His exuberance deflated quickly when he looked back down, questions and a morbid curiosity clouding his features. “Except you are doing a damned good job of...actually doing so oh my _goodness_ you are a slippery little fish, aren’t you, Mr. I’ve Got a Three Day Weekend from College, Let’s Hack MI6...you are good, you are a _lovely_ little scrap of a hacker, but I was doing this when you were in diapers, let’s see if you can withstand this...” He bent over and started typing on two boards, one hand on each, as he mouthed words and commands silently at the monitors in front of him.

Alec and James blinked rapidly at the display; Eve shook her head.

“What’s going on? How’s he doing?” Bill walked up behind them, and Alec swiveled around in his chair.

“One: you just missed something that frankly terrified me. Remind me never to try to hack MI6.”

Bill nodded. “I’ll put that in the company memo next week.”

Alec tilted his head in acknowledgement. “Thank you. Two: I am finishing the report, it should be on your desk or...in your inbox, or whatever...in about three weeks. Give or take a month or so.”

“So I should expect it by six hundred tomorrow?”

Alec sighed. “Yell at James, he’s not even doing his -”

“Already done. I turned it in a hour ago.” The agent arranged a smug look on his face.

Alec scowled at James. “You son of a bitch. Mudak.”

“Zalupa.”

“Nakhal.”

“CHILDREN.” Eve smacks James up alongside his head, and the agent rocked with the half-hearted blow, laughing. “Stop cussing at each other in Russian and let’s get to work.”

“Doing what? Q’s probably got most of the processing power of Britain breathing down this kid’s neck, judging by the loading time of the fifth chert chertovski page...really, do we need to do all of this?” Alec flicked his fingers at his monitor. “Bessmyslenno chertovski bespoleznym dokumenty , prosto obzor proklyatyye kadry videonablyudeniya...” He continued muttering darkly in his mother tongue and pecked at the keys in frustration.

Eve stared at James, who shrugged. “He has a habit of switching to Russian when he gets grumpy and pokey.”

“Yebut vyklyuchen, mudak.”

“Right back at you, dickhead.” James pushed off the desk and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m going to go cancel and reserve another day or something. I’ll be back to pick him off the floor.” With a crackly roll of his broad shoulders, he strode out of the underground lair the higher-ups called Q Branch, but everyone else took to calling the Batcave and Bond called his breakroom.

“Mr. Trevelyan, you can bitch and moan and say it’s pointless, but the more paperwork you fill out, the more likely we are going to be to believe you when you say that the twenty kilos of improvised explosives was worth the expense and the damage. I’d much rather have it from you, first hand, than from an indifferent camera that might not have caught exactly what was going on and did Bond say that he was...reserving another day?” Tanner paused and turned just as the last glimpse of Bond’s dove grey suit back disappeared around the bend at the end of the corridor. “Reserving for what?”

“I’m...not certain, Tanner.” Eve turned her head back to the excited Quartermaster who was now hopping from one foot to the other and humming as he did...things...to the computers in front of him. “Unless he had dinner plans with Q...though it’s too late for that...”

“Oh, son of a... _shluykha_! Fuck!” Alec dropped his head to the desk. “Damn it. I forgot!” He dug out his mobile and fumbled out a quick text. “I didn’t even _make_ the reservation!”

“What reservation, Alec?” Eve had her eyes on him now, and he cringed.

“Um...birthday dinner tomorrow-ish? Something? Maybe? But if Q is up all night with this, and he’s most likely been up since well before noon...yesterday, yeah, it’s not midnight yet, so it is still today, and what the hell sort of lives do we live again that we really don’t know what day it is anymore?” Alec shrugged away the wayward thought. “So anyway, since he’s mostly running on sugar and caffeine now, he’s going to crash, and then there will be no birthday dinner...” He set his phone down on one of the charging pads on the desk and went back to his work.

Eve blinked. “Birthday? Whose?”

Alec looked back up. “Oh. Um. Q’s. He’s...um...thirty...something. Maybe. Or seventeen. One of the two.” He shook his head. “Can’t even tell, with that hair of his.”

Bill stared down at his tablet, flicking his fingers across the screen as the Quartermaster let out another war cry and attacked something that made an odd clicking noise at him, and damned if Q didn't make the same noise right back at it. “Well, he’s not seventeen. His file says he’s...thirty-two. Well.” He peered at the screen. “In about half an hour.” Another shout of glee from the birthday boy. “And if he would act like it, we’d believe him more readily.”

Moneypenny dropped her head to her palms and groaned. “And James has something planned.”

“Um. Well, he did. Actually, I was supposed to make the reservation, don't know why he trusted me with it, and I forgot to do it because Tanner insisted that I do _paperwork_.” Alec threw his hands up in the air, then pounced on his mobile when it started to bleep at him. “See what happens when you have me do paperwork, Bill? I forget to do more important things...and now James is laughing at me, _why_ is he laughing at me? Did he know I was going to fail at this simple mission?” He tossed the phone back down. “Stupid _fucking_ paperwork.”  
  
“If you would do it on time, we wouldn’t have to worry about this, would we?” Tanner sighed the put upon sigh of the long suffering Chief of Staff who supervises a crowd of teenagers. _Which I am, at this point, I suppose_. “What did he say?”

“‘On my way back then. Saved me an explanation and some time. Thanks.’” Alec sighed the put upon sigh of a man who believed that paperwork was all a conspiracy to keep the Double Os busy on the rare days that the agents had nothing to do. _Which, if I admit it, seemed to be working._  “So what should we do about...” He flicked a hand to Q, who was slumped in his chair and muttering dejectedly about something happening on one of the monitors, and it didn't look good, judging by the odd shapes on the screen. ”Oi! Q -”  
  
One thin pale hand shot up to signal silence. “Shut up, Alec, working here, hacker's a bit trickier than I thought. Tricksy little bastard, he is, tricksy, tricksy hackerses. Let's see what's in his pocketses.” Q leaned forward and peered at his main screen. “Come to Daddy, mate. Come to Daddy, and let’s play...”

“I’m starting to worry about his sanity.” Alec poked at his mobile again when it bleeped at him. “Alright, apparently we are having an impromptu birthday party, complete with too much alcohol and takeaway Chinese and a movie called ‘The Goonies’, whatever tha - wait, ‘The Goonies’?” His eyebrows drew down in confusion. “Alright, why?”

Tanner shook his head in disbelief and walked away. “I’m not involved in this madness. I have work to do.”

“You’ll be back.” Eve called after him. “No one can resist the Truffle Shuffle!”

“What the hell sort of world have I awoken to?” Alec groaned and turned back to the monitor. “Can I just...hack this thing and make it fill everything out automatically?”

“That’s a good idea, I should make a programme like that!” Q shouted from his station. “Right after I hand this hacker his arse on a silver platter with a purple dildo shoved in it.”

  
  
  
  
  


Alec glanced up at the clock on the wall above the exit. One thirty-three in the ruddy morning. He glared at his monitor and smiled. “Finally. All finished.” He closed out of the writing programme and pushed away from the workstation. He looked up to Q, who pecked at the keys in front of his main monitor. “Are you good over there?”

“Mmm...yes.” Q flapped a tired hand behind him, then turned his head to give the agent a exhausted but satisfied smile. “I have a contingent of suitably dangerous and scary-looking agents on their way to the intruder’s location as we speak, and the kid is either going to shit his pants or ask for a job.” The Quartermaster drew his hand over his brow, wiping away a very light sheen of sweat. “He’s good, I’ll give him that. Gave me a run for my money for certain. I might actually hire him.”

“Well, happy birthday, anyway.” Alec flipped closed his binder, the one with hardcopy notations he took before, during and after missions.

Q stared up at him, confused. “Birthday?”

“Yes, birthday. Yours. Happy thirty-second birthday, Evan Holbrook, Quartermaster of MI6.”

Q blinked. “Um...” He stood and plucked nervously at his cashmere pullover, the heather grey and storm blue vee-necked thing that he insisted on wearing, _Hell, it’s better than the fucking brown thing that he did have when he and James first met..._ “My birthday?”

The tone of his voice set Alec on a strange edge, his analytical mind firing off multiple scenarios for why Q seemed to be very confused about the concept of his birthday. The man stepped forward, half expecting Q to back away like a skittish fawn. “Yeah, birthday. The day you were born? You celebrate it, usually with a party, cake, ice cream, pin the tail on the donkey, pinatas, alcohol, bad karaoke? Bad decisions and, if you are really unlucky, a trip to Medical for an itch.”

Finally, comprehension dawned on the hacker’s face. “Oh! It’s...today, isn't it?. Oh. Right, I thought it was. Um...” Q turned and checked something on his mobile, then the main monitor that was running different diagnostic programmes. “Not today. I thought. Well.”

“You forgot your own birthday.” Alec smirked, feeling better and really glad he wouldn’t have to murder people for hurting Q. “Didn’t you?”

“Might have done. Um. I don’t really celebrate it, I guess? Haven’t for a while. So yes, I probably forgot all about it.” Q shrugged. “Sort of pointless when you work all the time, and are too old to have silly parties. Why are we doing so now?”

“Because you deserve it?” A voice boomed from the entrance, and James walked into the main part of Q Branch, loaded down with bags upon bags of things. “And I love you. So we are having a party, right here. I have some people from upstairs coming down, and M, and Eve and Tanner and the cleaning guy...” He wrestled the giant bag of heavenly-smelling Chinese and Thai food off his arm, then pulled a takeaway cake out of one cloth tote. “Didn’t find anyone to write on it, so I picked up some extra frosting.” He slid the cake and the tube of frosting - black - onto the worktop next to Alec and dug around in the bottom of the tote in his hands. “Got you - yes, here it is - got you a present.” He pulled out a hastily wrapped package and tossed it at Q. “Go ahead and open it. I think you will like it.”  
  
Q caught it distractedly, his hands fumbling on the crinkly paper. “Um. James? I, uh, I don’t...why?”

James smiled up at him. “You are here, with me, tonight.”

Q shook his head. “It’s a normal night.”

“Exactly. No danger, no missions, nothing going on. But here you are.” He threw the empty bag on the floor and attacked the next one as Eve and Tanner walked through the doors, followed by Harold the cleaning guy and three people from Analytics and a couple from the old TSS. All people Q would probably consider himself close to, if not actual friends. Q blinked at them and dropped his gaze to the package - _a present, really James?_  - in his hands. He pulled at the wrapping, tape and paper coming off in clumps.

Alec watched Eve set out the plates and flatware and the food on the worktop, shoving computer boards and keyboards out of the way. Tanner was in the middle of the room, setting up a projector of some sort to point at the one flat wall in the whole underground complex, thanks to a bit of drywall, and Alec could see the DVD case sticking out of a jacket pocket. The door opened again to admit M and three more people. The agent could feel his face cracking into a smile as he swiveled his head to watch his friend. James was wrestling with the frosting tube, making some interesting decorations to the sugar flowers and leaves already on the cake in his quest to write words legibly. He paused, cocked his head, then smirked as he added something else.

As Q gasped at the open box in his hands, a shocked look on his face, James painted things on the cake. People were already making a ruckus in the background as the movie started, mostly cheers and ‘Holy shit I remember this movie’ and 'The Truffle Shuffle!'. Alec’s smile grew as he stared at what James finally managed to write.

 

**HAPPY BIRTHDAY QUARTERMASTER**

**LOVE, 007, MI6 AND ENGLAND**

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
